[OPE-L:2230] value form

["C. J. Arthur" <cjarthur@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mike W wrote
"Approaching it from another angle, Value neither is nor has a substantial
content. Value is rather a predicate. A social system predicates and
re-predicates a value 'to' commodities. Goods and services are not value,
rather they have a (n exchange) value and so are Commodities. The social
object nearest to actually *being value* as can exist is Money, the sole
autonomous manifestation of value. In this sense it is (almost) pure value
form; contentless form; a predicate without a substantial subject. It is
this tendential escape of the value-form from any link with use-value
(itself already a systemically alienated form of existence of human
usefulness) that constitutes the void at the centre of capitalism. Of course
it is absurd to have the allocation of human creative work regulated by a
near contentless form. But it is the actually existing systemic absurdity of
capitalism, not the absurdity of a mistaken conceptualisation."

Grammatical predication covers a wide range of substantive attributions.
Compare 'C is valuable'; 'C is a value"; 'M is value for itself'; 'K is
self-valorising value'. marx said all these; but clearly the attribute
predicated is more essential at each level. Which do you accept? If any but
the first then you are committed to the position that value is a social
substance of some sort - or else that the rest are all figures of speech.
Chris

P. S. Please note that I have a new Email address,
<cjarthur@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
but the old one will also run until next summer. (To be doubly sure load both!)